Tuesday, May 17, 2022

Musk pauses Twitter buy until platform proves less than 5% of users are spambots

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By Christine Hall and Haje Jan Kamps

Tuesday, May 17, 2022

It's Tuesday, May 17, 2022, and we are currently in the midst of an existential crisis; aren't we all, when we are being very honest with ourselves, a little bit spambot at heart? 

Tomorrow, TC Sessions: Mobility kicks off. Last chance saloon to buy tickets for our in-person event Wednesday and Thursday, or the virtual event on Friday! — Haje and Christine

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Image Credits: Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket / Getty Images

The TechCrunch Top 3

  • Spambots holding up Twitter deal: Elon Musk doubled down on his previous tweets this morning, basically saying that if Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal is unable to back up claims that the number of spam and/or fake accounts is around the 5% the company says, Musk's deal to acquire Twitter will not move forward. It would be a shame, really, after we've devoted so much effort in following the story, for it to not go through.
  • The Twitter choice is up to you: Which then begs the question: "Does Elon Musk really even want to buy Twitter?" Alex does a deep dive into this very question, and when he resurfaces, he finds that perhaps Musk wants to get out of the deal for a couple of reasons, one being it was not the company he thought it was.
  • Where dem dollas at?: Enabling other companies to offer financial products continues to be a hot area for venture capital investors to put their dollars. The latest is Unit, which is now a unicorn after closing on a $100 million Series C round. What's interesting about what Unit does is that anyone, even those in the freelance or creator economy, can do it, too.

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Startups and VC

Icarus ignores Daedalus’s instructions not to fly too close to the sun, melting its wax wings. A similar situation is causing Bird to change course and drop vehicle sales in pursuit of profitability, according to its Q1 earnings call, Rebecca reports. 

In a curious twist, Greenlight — which typically focuses on bank accounts for kids — just launched a new credit card aimed at helping parents save for college for their kids. The card's purpose is reflected in the way it's being marketed, but ultimately, it functions very similarly to any other credit card that offers cash back to users, Anita concludes. 

All startups, all the time:

How to evolve your DTC startup's data strategy and identify critical metrics

Most e-commerce startups use the same major platforms and analytics tools to gather data for the dashboards that measure the health of their businesses.

As a result, most direct-to-consumer companies make the same mistakes when it comes to refining raw transactional data, according to Michael Perez, director of growth and data at M13.

The calculation errors hardwired into platform data can lead teams to miscalculate key metrics, “drastically overestimate their customer lifetime value and overspend on marketing campaigns,” says Perez.

He identifies two common data mistakes: creating metrics at the wrong level of granularity, and using downstream metrics that usually create data silos. 

“We're generally big fans of plug-and-play business intelligence tools, but they won't scale with your business.”

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.) 

How to evolve your DTC startup's data strategy and identify critical metrics image

Image Credits: deepblue4you / Getty Images

Big Tech Inc.

Want to monitor your company's carbon footprint? Microsoft has an offering for that. The tech giant is joining other tech giants, like Salesforce, Google (which announced some new security features itself) and IBM, in offering sustainability tracking products. In Microsoft's case, it will gather a bunch of data companies can use to eventually reduce that footprint and meet sustainability goals.

Robinhood has its sights set on a new target: more features. One includes enabling users to manage their own crypto wallets instead of Robinhood doing it for them. There seems to be a "private key" involved with the custodial accounts, so make sure you don't leave it anywhere.

Lots of Apple news today. We'll give you the short-short version, including new rules that will let apps raise subscription prices automatically (that won't be abused, right?). The company is also kicking off its new Apple Music concert series with a livestream performance by Harry Styles and reportedly testing out E Ink's outer display as it designs a foldable device.

Some others for your afternoon jam session:

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